one and the other slept unnoticed for centuries. And if waked up by critics of a more modern age, it has only been (as Michaelis, we have seen, confesses) from the supposed necessity of such dates, in order to any possible explanation of the Apocalyptic prophecies.'

It does not need that I discuss at all prominently certain points of indirect and subsidiary historical evidence, in favour of an early date, which these writers have also called in to their aid. A sufficient notice of them will be found below and it will appear that they all, like the direct testimony just discussed, prove weak and worthless on examination.2-Nor will the only other

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in Patmum insulam sub Domiliano fuisse Eusebius Pamphili in Chronicâ suâ citat." B. P. M. 743. 1 See Note 2 p. 36 suprà.

2 There are two points of subsidiary historic evidence urged by Sir I. Newton, in proof of the Apocalypse having been written in Nero's persecution; besides the story from Clement already noticed Note 4, p. 37.

Of these two the one is thus stated by that eminent author, "Eusebius in his Chronicle and Ecclesiastical History follows Irenæus: but afterwards in his Evangelical Demonstrations he conjoins the banishment of John into Patmos with the deaths of Peter and Paul: and so do Tertullian, and Pseudo-Prochorus; as well as the first author, whoever he was, of that very ancient fable, that John was put by Nero into a vessel of boiling oil, and, coming out unhurt was banished by him into Patmos. Though this story be no more than a fiction, yet was it founded on a tradition in the first churches, that John was banished into Patmos in the days of Nero."

On this I observe.

1. Eusebius, after briefly sketching the earlier persecutions of the apostles and disciples, as related in the Book of the Acts of the Apostles, adds that subsequently to these (eti tovtois) James, the Lord's brother, was stoned to death; and then passes to the following notice of Peter, Paul, and John, which is the passage referred to by Sir I. Newton; Και Πετρος δε επι Ῥωμης κατα κεφαλης σαυρούται, Παυλος τε αποτέμνεται, Ιωαννης τε νησῳ παραδίδοται —a passage followed by the general statement that the surviving disciples, undeterred by these things, persisted in their Christian profession and designs. Eusebius Dem. Evang. Lib. iii. p. 116. (Paris 1628.) Thus we see that there is here no intimation whatever of synchronism between the two events.

2. In Tertullian's Treatise De Pres. Hær. c. 36, (who was the first author of the story referred to*) the conjoined mention of John's being thrown into boil ing oil, and Paul's and Peter's death, is not at all a chronological but a local conjunction. Speaking of Rome he says; "Ista quàmt felix ecclesia cui totam doctrinam apostoli cùm sanguine profuderunt: ubi Petrus passioni Dominicæ adæquatur; ubi Paulus Joannis [s.c. Baptista] exitu coronatur; ubi apostolus Joannes, posteaquam in oleum igneum demersus nihil passus est, in insulam relegatur." Not a word is said of this last transaction having taken place under Nero. On the contrary, tradition, we sha'l now see, referred it to the times of Domitian. For first Jerom adv. Jovinian (Lib. i.) repeats the story immediately Aliter, Statu felix. So Pamelius.

* Sec Lardner, ii. 286.

evidence offered on their side,-evidence internal in its character, and which has been urged of late years with great earnestness and some effect by Dr. Tilloch and others, after Sir Isaac and Bishop Newton,-be found at all better able to bear examination.

For what is the main argument? It is founded on certain marked similarities discoverable, as they suppose, in sundry Epistles of Peter and Paul, written before Nero's

after the clause given in Note 1 p. 40 suprà, wherein he states Domitian to have been the Emperor that banished St. John to Patmos. Further Sir I. Newton's own witness.

3. Pseudo-Prochorus is as directly against him. For after telling the story at full length, and similarly conjoining the mention of this event with that of Paul's and Peter's martyrdoms, as a mere association of place, (for he supposes it to have occurred at Rome, and that thus the Porta Latina in that city became a memorial of the one apostle, as the Porta Vaticana was of the two others,) after this, I say, he expressly states the Emperor by whom St. John was thus thrown into the oil to have been Domitian, (who soon after banished him to Patmos,) not Nero. "Audiens Domitianus de adventu ejus (Joannis), jussit ut proconsul duceret ante Portam Latinam, et in ferventis olei dolium, illum vivum dimitti.". "Deus enim per crudelem tyrannum consilium suum disponebat, ut, sicut virtutibus et signis Joannes et Petrus socii fuerunt, ita in urbi Româ memoriam haberent sui triumphi. Sicut enim Porta Vaticana," &c. Domitian is again and again mentioned by this writer as the Emperor concerned in the persecution of St. John. B. P. M. ii. 52.

One cannot but greatly regret that such a man as Sir I. Newton should have written what was not only so incorrect, but so calculated to mislead. Perhaps, however, he may have transcribed from others, and not looked into the originals.

The other point of subsidiary historic evidence urged by Sir Isaac, and repeated by Dr. Tilloch with an air of great confidence and triumph, p. 41, is the early existence of pseudo-Apocalypses in the professing Christian Church; especially one by Cerinthus, who, they say, lived so early as to withstand the apostles in the first Council at Jerusalem, (Acts xv,) and died before St. John ;-- which false Apocalypses implied the previous existence of the true.—But what the authority for assigning this early date to Cerinthus and his Apocalypses? It is well known to be a controverted point (as Mosheim says, i. 2. 5. 16, and Lardner viii. 409) whether Cerinthus was of the first century or the second. Epiphanius,—the inaccurate and most untrustworthy Epiphanius,-is the only author of the story of Cerinthus being at the Council at Jerusalem. On the other hand Irenæus dates the Cerinthians after the Nicolaitans; which last he deemed (as his date of the Apocalypse proves) to have been of Domitian's time. Theodoret implies (as Lardner observes, ibid.) that Cerinthus did not arise till the old age of St John; and Epiphanius himself puts the Cerinthians elsewhere after the Carpocratians, whom all place, I believe, (See Lardner 393) after the end of the first century. Let me add, had these perverters of St. John's Apocalypse written as early as Tilloch asserts, might we not presume that they would have been as specifically reprobated, as those that wrested St. Paul's epistles, in 2 Peter iii. 16?

See the notices of it by Burgh in the Appendix to his Comment on the Revelation, and by a Reviewer in the Investigator, Vol. i. p. 213. The former entirely adopts and approves the argument; the latter however much more cautiously, and only in part.

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death, to passages in the Apocalypse; whence they infer that the Apocalypse was written first, the Epistles afterwards. Now in a question of this kind it is important to distinguish between cases of reference to some antecedent writing,-whether direct, or by means of the article or pronouns demonstrative,-and those of mere similarity of thought or expression. Of the former class of examples, adduced by these critics from the apostolic epistles, there is not one, I believe, which is not explicable as a reference to the previous prophecies of the Old Testament. As to cases of mere similarity and coincidence of thought, if we may often see much of it even in uninspired writings, without implying imitation on the part of one or other of the writers, how much more may we expect undesigned resemblances in inspired writings, such as are both the Epistles and Book of the Apocalypse spoken of; seeing that, though written by different human penmen, they were inspired by one and the same divine Spirit: which Spirit may just as well be supposed to have dictated an idea or brief sketch to St. Peter or St. Paul, which was afterwards to be developed in the finished pictures of the Apocalypse of St. John, as to have spoken by those first-mentioned Apostles in terms or figures borrowed from the pre

1 See the enumeration of them in Sir I. Newton and Dr. Tilloch. The most striking, I think, are those from St. Peter about the church at Babylon, the royal priesthood, and new heavens and new earth; and those from the Hebrews about the heavenly sabbatism, the general assembly, the coming unto Mount Zion, the city that hath the foundations, the heavenly Jerusalem: also, as Dr. Tilloch adds, p. 99, and his Reviewer in the Investigator, the expressions in 1 Cor. xv. 52, about the last Trumpet's sounding, and in Gal. iv. 26 about the Jerusalem above, which is the mother of us all.

2 E. g. St. Peter's promised new heavens and new earth may be referred to Isa. lxv. 17, lxvi. 22, as well as to Apoc. xxi. 1; the city which hath the foundations to Isa. liv. 11, as well as to Apoc. xxi. 14;-the last trumpet to Exod. xix. 16, (compared with Heb. xii. 19, 26 and 1 Thess. iv. 16,) as well as to Apoc. xi. 15.

32 Peter i. 20, 21: "No prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation for the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man, but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost."

viously promulged pictures of the Apocalypse. All this is very evident; and with it the exceeding danger of arguing, so as Newton and Tilloch have done, for the chronological priority of the Apocalypse, from any supposed imitations of it which they may think to trace in one and another of the apostolic epistles. But it is to Dr. Tilloch himself that we owe the setting forth of the utter unsoundness and error of this their argument in the clearest light. For he has plainly shown that on this principle there must be allowed proof of reference to the Apocalypse in St. Paul's two Epistles to the Thessalonians,-proof as conclusive as in any other case: -the which Epistles were, however, notoriously written 2 (and indeed other of the Epistles also 3) before ever a Christian church was founded at Ephesus: much more

Tilloch, Diss. ii. § 11, pp. 110-122. In the First Epistle to the Thessalonians, he says, p. 110, there are several expressions, which, "if we believe that the writer often has allusions to the Apocalypse in his other Epistles, we can hardly have reason to doubt have reference to the contents of that prophecy :" instancing the wrath to come, the coming of Christ with all his saints, the coming as a thief in the night, the trumpet of God, and the signs and periods, which the Christians addressed perfectly knew; 1 Thess. i. 10, iii. 13, iv. 16, v. i, compared with Apoc. vi. 16, xix. 11-14, xi. 15, xiii. 5, &c.-Again of the Second Epistle he writes, p. 117; "To the author of this work it appears certain that in these passages of the first chapter (viz. verses 7, 8, Rest with us, when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven in flaming fire,') the allusions to the Apocalypse are quite obvious."

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Both these Epistles were written, while Timothy and Silas were with Paul, from Corinth (compare Acts xviii. 5, 1 Thess. i. 1, iii. 1, 2, 6, 2 Thess. i. 1) : and it was not till after leaving Corinth that he first touched at Ephesus, where there was then no Christian church, but only a Jewish synagogue (Acts xviii. 19;) nor till his second visit, on returning from Jerusalem and Antioch, (Acts xix. 1, &c.) that he formed a church in that city,-indeed Tilloch allows this, pp. 21, 112.

3 E. g. the first Epistle to the Corinthians. For it was written from Ephesus, as all allow, and is indeed most manifest (see 1 Cor. xvi. 8, 19), during St. Paul's sojourn at Ephesus, mentioned Acts xix. in which he founded the Ephesian Church.*-I might add the same of the Epistle to the Galatians, which bears date probably yet earlier. See Lardner and Macknight on the Chronology of St. Paul's Epistles.

Would St. Paul have simply said 1 Cor. xv. 8, "Last of all he was seen by me also," if St. John had subsequently, yet before St. Paul's writing to the Corinthians, been favoured with the vision of Christ in Patmos; and not rather pointedly referred to that extraordinary vision in further proof of Christ's resurrection?

before it had any episcopal angel presiding over it, such as was addressed in the first of the Apocalyptic Epistles by the Lord Jesus.'-Such is their main argument to prove an early date from internal evidence. Of the lesser and subsidiary I add a brief notice below.2

One word, ere I conclude, on two or three partially corroborative points of evidence drawn from profane history and historians. First, it would seem from their report very questionable (nor does any authentic ecclesiastical history decisively contradict it) whether Nero's

There is a passage in Polycarp's Epistle to the Philippians, hitherto unnoticed in this controversy, which seems to me very illustrative. He writes thus, § 11; "St. Paul in the beginning of his Epistle, glories of you in all the churches which then only knew God; for we did not then know Him." That is, that at the date of St. Paul's Epistle to the Philippians, or as late as about the year A.D. 62, the Christian Church of Smyrna (which was one of the Apocalyptic churches) had not been formed.

2 First Sir I. Newton draws a subsidiary argument from the Jewish allusions prominent in the Apocalypse;-" allusions," says Sir I. "to the temple and altar and Holy City, as then standing." But surely this is taking for granted a point essential to be proved in the first instance, (and which, let me beg to say, I am persuaded never can be proved,) viz. that these terms are to be construed literally of the old Jerusalem, not figuratively of the Christian Church. In a Book that confessedly abounds in symbols, is not a symbolic use of these terms natural, and almost to be expected?-Of the same class, and as obviously invalid, are Professor Moses Stuart's arguments, given very recently in the American Bibliotheca Sacra, No. ii. p. 349: arguments drawn, 1st, from the exemption of Christian Jews, so he explains the sealed in Apoc. vii, and also of the inner sanctuary of the Temple, Apoc. xi, from impending destruction; 2nd, from the express naming of the city to be destroyed as the place where our Lord was crucified, viz. Jerusalem; "which," says he, "consequently could not then have been destroyed." Would the professor argue that the literal Sodom and Gomorrha were yet standing while Isaiah prophesied, because of his address. Isa. i. 10. "Hear ye the word of the Lord, ye Rulers of Sodom, give ear unto the law of our God, ye people of Gomorrha?" As to the constant and consistent symbolic use of these figures in the Apocalypse, it will abundantly appear in the ensuing Commentary." Somewhat of a similar kind is Michaelis' argument from the designation of the presiding bishops of the seven churches as angels. In the Epistles, he argues, the governors of the Churches are called emoкожо, bishops: and from St. John's calling them angels we may perhaps infer that the Apocalypse was written before this episcopal appellative came into use; i. e. before the Epistles.-As if the symbolic use of that term, as well as of others borrowed from the Jewish ritual, did not sufficiently explain the thing! See a Note on that verse of the Apocalypse which mentions angels, in the Introduction, chap. ii.

* Since this was printed in the Second Edition, Professor Stuart's Commentary on the Apocalypse has been published; developing more fully his reasons of this class, as well as other reasons, for preferring the Neronic date. A full examination of them will be found in the Appendix to this first Volume.